The Winchester Goose: At the Court of Henry VIII Read online

  Poor Anthony doesn’t know what to do with me. He hovers about me like one of those striped beasties that linger about the marigolds in the garden. Although, God knows, I am no flower.

  The face that peers back from my looking glass is pale and shadowed around the eyes. I miss my sister, my naughty, disobedient, defiant, infuriating little sister, as I would miss my right hand.

  At court there is so much happening that no one has time to spare for the loss of a young woman. They treat us, not as if we are the victims of some misfortune, but more as if we have been rather careless. Not one of our acquaintances, high or low, has bothered to help us in our search for her. Francis and Eve have disappeared as thoroughly as an early morning mist on a summer’s day.

  I am dressed in my wedding gown and the pearls that are closely sewn onto the bodice and hood hang like shining, unshed tears. Father kisses my cold cheek and says I am beautiful but it is just the dress that is fine, not me. My looking glass tells me that I am made plainer than ever by grief.

  Eve should be here, teasing me, bearing my train, sprinkling me with petals as I adorned her on her wedding day. I miss her each moment of every day and when my husband meets me at the church door, it is not of him that I think, or the night that will follow. In my mind’s eye all I can think of is Eve’s lifeless body washed up on some unnamed shore.

  The stone chapel floor where I kneel is as cold as my heart.

  I do not tremble when my husband looks upon my unclothed body for the first time. Indeed, I barely shudder when he takes me. I have long ceased to fear, or to anticipate, the heady, blood surging passion that Eve promised I should feel. Anthony’s attentions have no more effect on me than a troublesome fly. I am dead. My body feels nothing and my mind acknowledges only pain.

  As I lay beneath my husband’s labours I think of Eve, seeking ways to discover her whereabouts, wrack my brains trying to remember each word of our last conversation, some tiny detail that might lead me to her. When Anthony emits a great sigh and his body goes rigid, I feel a surge of warmth between my legs. Then he rolls off to lie panting on his back while I stare at the ceiling and try to remember exactly what Eve was wearing the last time I saw her.

  “Did I hurt you?” My husband’s voice drags me from my thoughts.

  “What? No, no. I am quite comfortable. Thank you.”

  “Good,” he says and leans over to leave a kiss on my brow. “Goodnight.” He falls straight into a heavy slumber while I lie awake, wondering and plotting in the darkness.

  In the morning when he takes me again I am surprised, I hadn’t realised it would be a regular occurrence. I had imagined it to be something I should have to indulge him in once a month or so. It occurs to me that such attentions might soon prove tedious. He slavers at my breasts, gropes between my thighs, moving me not at all, and I am greatly relieved when he is done so I can wash and dress. Perhaps, since I have pleased him so well, Anthony will humour me and take me into the city to enquire if anyone has seen Eve there.

  I sit up on my pillow as he dresses and watch his man laboriously tying his laces, brushing his shoulders. As soon as he is dressed and the servant departed I can keep silent no longer. “He drinks, you know, far too much.”

  Anthony’s calm grey eyes turn upon me. “Who does, my dear?”

  “Francis Wareham, of course and, and …” I hesitate, wondering if it is indelicate to continue. But I am a married woman now and surely can discuss intimate matters with my husband. I drop my voice to a whisper. “Eve told me that he dallies with the servants.”

  Anthony’s eyebrows shoot up into his cap.

  “Indeed? I can’t say I am unduly surprised.”

  “Why?” I pierce him with my eye, wondering if all men dally likewise.

  “He looks the type. I warned your father at the time.”

  “Did you?” I watch him gather his belongings from the washstand. “Do you wish Eve had married you instead?”

  The words are out of my mouth before I have thought what I am saying, and my husband’s hands hover above his belt before he turns and comes to sit upon the bed.

  “My dear, I did not know your sister well enough when I asked for her hand. I was merely blinded by her youth, her lively wit and I thought, fleetingly, that she would adorn my table. Now I realise that she would have made me miserable and led me a merry dance. I am very happy with the wife I have.”

  He leans forward and leaves a kiss upon my hair. “And I hope that she is likewise happy.”

  I swallow and blink away tears. I have scarcely given it any thought but I nod and try to smile.

  “I – I wondered if perhaps we could go into the town, look about and make some enquiry and discover if anyone has seen her?”

  He turns again, takes my hand. “Isabella, you must let this go. She has been gone almost a month. There is little chance of discovering her whereabouts now. If she comes back, she comes back. Think on it no more, it is time now for you to think of our marriage and the sons you will bear me. Besides, the Queen has requested your presence today, has she not?”

  I make a rude noise. “Oh, Katherine,” I say contemptuously. “If only Anna were still Queen.”

  If she were Queen she would make certain Eve was found, living or dead, but Katherine thinks only of gowns and jewels and dancing … as everyone had known she would … except for the King. But the Lady Anna is ensconced in her new house at Richmond and can offer me no help at all.

  As I had feared, Katherine invites me to join her household and I am constrained to accept her request. She is as unqueenly as it is possible to be. Like a child she grabs my hand and shows me her new gowns, and I feel quite impatient with her although I daren’t show it. Instead, I put on an act and gush over her fine silks and brocades, and when she lets me hold her newest string of pearls, I let them trickle through my fingers as if I really adore them. Her world, for all its glamour, is really very small.

  “It will be such fun, Bella, like old times when we served Lady Anna, only more so now that I am Queen. We can have pageants and dancing and private parties. There will be no end of fun.”

  I watch her preen herself before the glass. She holds her new gown before her, turning this way and that, watching the way her hair trickles down her back.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” I murmur, wishing that Eve were here. She was the one to relish serving a woman like Katherine, both of them as vain as peacocks, each as pretty and as gay as the other. I know I will hate serving her. I shall not help but measure her every movement against Anna’s, judge her harshly and suffer her ill.

  The Queen’s childish giggles dwindle away as she turns back to the mirror and, almost at once, my mind wanders back to Eve. How am I going to bear the superficiality of the Queen’s household when, for all I know, my sister is in dire need of me? If only there were some way I could escape the duty.

  The sing-song voice of the Queen draws me back to the present … to a reality that is more like a child’s play-time. “We travel north in a few days, Bella, so make yourself ready for a journey. There are still rumblings of discontent in the far counties and the King desires to show himself to his people. And to show off his new Queen, of course …” As usual her conversation dissolves into giggles. She reduces everything to laughter and I wonder how on earth anyone can imagine that a girl as superficial as she could hope to keep the interest of a man like Henry – a man, for all his faults, of intellect and acumen.

  But, for all her ill-manners, Katherine is a Howard, niece to the Duke of Norfolk and therefore influential. She raises her hand to her mouth and whispers something to Jane Rochford, and the latter spins on her heel and leaves the room to attend the Queen’s bidding, whatever it may be.

  After a further twenty minutes or so of Katherine’s prattle I find I am desperate to escape her presence. The windows are closed to avoid the stench of the river, and the air inside is stale with a cloying perfume that sickens me. I feel as if I am ailing. I cannot concentrate on anything for
the whereabouts of Eve is like a fever in my mind, blotting out all else. I let my eyes travel about the chamber, taking in the new tapestries, the heavy drapes, the heap of new gowns upon the bed. Searching for an escape, I seize upon the notion of gowns, groping pitifully for a way out or even just a reprieve. I cannot concentrate on the Queen and royal duty just now.

  “I will need a few days, Your Grace, to organise my wardrobe, but I can come Tuesday next should that please you?”

  She turns from the mirror in which she has been admiring another necklace and beams upon me.

  “Of course, Bella. I shall look forward to it. It will be deliciously amusing.” Thankfully, I bow myself from her presence and once in the corridor, turn on my heel and march too briskly for gentility back to our married quarters.

  I had hoped, now I am wed, that I would be spared my duties at court. Anthony has promised me a visit to his manor in Wales but that trip must now be postponed. “Damn her,” I mumble, but as I turn the corner into our chamber, I am unsure as to whether I am damning Katherine or Eve.

  Joan Toogood

  She must feel strange, walking here beside me, lifting her skirts above the foulness of the alleyway. Her feet slip in the mire and the hem of her gown is besmirched with mud but still she follows, although I can tell she wishes she wasn’t here. She is pale, glancing anxiously from side to side, her lips colourless as she shivers and her hands are trembling as if she has the plague.

  “I cannot be responsible for the things you see here, my dear,” I say. My neighbour, Bertha, is scolding her sozzled husband as we pass by and I raise a careless hand in greeting. Beside me, my lady averts her eye, raises her nose and flinches away from the stench of my world. We might as well live on separate spheres. I shrug. It isn’t my fault if she doesn’t like what she finds here. I stop suddenly and point a finger along the route she is to take.

  “See there, past the midden where the pigs are rooting? It’s up that stairway you must go, just behind the inn, but be careful on those rickety steps; my room is right at the end.”

  I wonder what she will make of my musty chamber with its damp spots and draughty shutters. A fine, pretty lady like her will have never seen anywhere like it before, of that I am certain.

  “Go on up, my dear, that’s where you’ll find him.” I bite my lip, gesture her forward, knowing he will have thrown off his cloak and be growing impatient. To my surprise, as she goes, I feel a twinge of conscience and wonder what she will say when she finds her husband sprawled on a whore’s bed. If she mislikes him dallying with her servants she will not like to find him here. Maybe I should call her back …

  But she is gone, sidling past the pigs, tiptoeing through the mire and climbing gingerly up the unsteady stairs. Her gloved hand reaches out to throw open the chamber door and I hold my breath, listening for the rumpus that promises to be as good as any bawdy play.

  Instead, a few moments later I hear a scream so grisly that my hair prickles on my scalp. For a few moments I stand amazed and then, wrenching up my skirts, I fly across the yard and scramble up the steps behind her.

  Just as I reach the top My Lady stumbles backwards across the threshold, a hand to her mouth. Her gown is spattered with spots of blood and her eyes are wide open, her mouth squared and ugly as she gropes blindly at my arms, scrabbles at my hands, babbling nonsense.

  I am afraid of such madness and cannot bear to let her touch me. Crossing myself, I wrench away from her clutching hands so violently that she loses her footing. I mean her no harm but her ankle turns on the top step and I see her face open like a flower as she realises she is going to fall.

  Before I can stop her, she tumbles backwards and I watch helplessly as her body bounces loosely from step to step.

  After a moment, I peer down to the bundle of fine linen and velvet in the mud. Her face is white, her eyes closed, but I can just determine the rise and fall of her chest. I am torn between running to help her and venturing inside to discover what horror waits inside.

  No sound comes from within and with my heart hammering like a drum, I glance back at Francis’ wife and then at the door before, holding my breath, I push it open.

  Francis! Oh, my God. Oh, my life! He stares back at me, his eyes wide open, seeing nothing, his best slashed doublet daubed in gore. Rooted to the spot, I put a hand to my mouth, feeling my gorge rising. I want to grab the jewelled dagger that is sticking from his heart and thrust it into my own.

  For a long time that might be only moments, I look upon my poor dead lover, my mind empty of everything but the loss of him. I make no plans, concoct no cure for our predicament, and do not move a muscle until a small sound behind me makes me leap in fear. With a hand to my chest, I turn to find that Sybil has left her stool to creep indoors behind me. She moves toward the bed, a hand clamped across her lips, her hair tangled, a drool of spittle on her chin. She turns her ravaged face toward me. “Christ and his saints, Joanie, what 'as 'appened 'ere?”

  As usual she is looking to me for answers. Why do they all look to me? I am just Joan the whore. I don’t know what happened or what to do about it.

  I shake my head dully, my eyes still fastened on his motionless body. Since the day he walked into my life he has ne’er kept still. He has always been full of life and movement, even in sleep he twitches and wriggles like a bag o’ eels.

  “We 'ave to do something before someone comes.”

  Slowly, very slowly, I pull my gaze from Francis and know that Sybil is right. If we are not to bear the blame for this, we must act and act now. I shake myself, fumble in my leaden brain as to what to do. There is no one who can help us. I have no man to turn to now. Francis will never come again.

  A whimper erupts from my breast but I push it away. It’s no time for panic now. I have a corpse in my bed and another at the foot of my stairs. Southwark is no stranger to trouble but this is the worst crime I have ever witnessed. I need a man to help me and of all the full grown, strong-bodied men I consort with, there is only one I trust, and he hardly more than a boy.

  Grabbing Sybil by the shoulders, I shake her roughly. “Run and fetch Peter, quickly.”

  She shakes her head, gaping at me, still afraid to go abroad, even now. I want to slap her.

  “It’s but two streets away,” I cry. “You have to go or, if you don’t, then when the justices come I will tell them it was you as done it and you can rot in The Clink for the rest o’ your days.”

  Her chin trembles but I do not heed it. I push her cruelly toward the door, over the threshold, and as she clatters down the stairs and leaps nimbly over the prone body of Francis’ wife, I remember that I have yet to move her.

  At the end of the alley Bertha is still berating her old man. I lift my petticoats and run toward her. “Bertha,” I whisper hoarsely and she lifts her head, noting the urgency of my tone. “There’s a drunken toff at the foot of my stairs, come help me get 'em to bed.”

  Before hurrying to my summons she lets fly a few more insults and spits on the floor at her husband’s feet. Glad to see her go, he settles back on the step and prepares to sleep it off.

  “Bloody men,” she sneers, displaying her lack-tooth gums. “What are they good for, Joanie? You tell me that.”

  I have no need to give her an answer, even if I had one, for we have arrived at the place where M’lady Wareham is still lying like a broken flower. Bertha makes a noise through her teeth. “She’s a lady, by all that’s holy.”

  “Yes,” I say, “grab her feet.” And between us we haul Francis’ wife up the stairs and shove her onto Sybil’s seat by the chamber door.

  “Thanks, Bertha,” I say. “I will see you all right later, if you keep your gob shut.”

  She lays a finger alongside her nose and closes one eye while I lean on the door jamb so she doesn’t seek a way inside. Casually, we chat for a while and all the time, although my insides are churning, I pretend to be calm. While she lingers, cursing the day she ever set eyes on her old man, I know that on my bed
Francis’ body is stiffening, his blood cooling, and he will never warm me again.

  Peter and Sybil appear in the alley, their faces red from running. I nod in their direction. “Business is on its way, Bertha. You must excuse me.”

  “This one looks eager for it too, I’d say,” she cackles as she hauls her bulk down the stairs, winking at Peter as he rushes toward me.

  He climbs the stair two at a time and frowns, running an eye over Mrs Wareham who, for all intents and purposes, is snoring, her fine, bright clothes like a flag against the drabness of my world. I jerk my head, bidding him follow, and turn into my chamber to reveal the tragedy upon my bed.

  The sight turns his face white. “What have you done?” he groans, pulling off his cap. “Joanie, what in God’s Heaven have you done?”

  “I’ve done nothing, Peter. I loved him with my whole being and he were alive and kicking when I left him. I think it was her.”

  I jerk my head in the direction of the fine lady who stirs and snorts, her mouth open, head lolling.

  “Who is she? Is she drunk?”

  I shake my head. “Nay, she fell down the stair, she is knocked silly and will be right when she comes to. She’s his wife, I do believe.”

  “You must call the constable …”

  “Don’t be daft, Peter. Who will they believe? Me, or her ladyship here?”

  He shifts from foot to foot, twisting his cap in his hands, biting his bottom lip. I feel a twinge of guilt. Maybe I shouldn’t have got him involved; he is little more’n a lad really. It isn’t fair on him.

  “What then, Joanie? What are you going to do?”

  I try not to remember happier days as I turn again to look at Francis, the blood soaked counterpane, the pool of gore on the boards. With a blood stained fist, I rub my nose and fix Peter with a serious stare. “Get rid of the body.”